Getting Into Octane Renderer for Cinema 4D

A while ago Dominik Dammelhart got into using Otoy’s Octane Render for Cinema 4D, and since then he has been posting a few things on its use. Here, Dominik provides a great overview for everything that is Octane for Cinema 4D, covering topics such as lights, Metallic shaders, Glass, and SubSurface Scattering Materials.

Learn everything about the octane plugin that you need to know. Lights, SSS Materials, Metal Shaders, Glas and much much more!Dominik Dammelhart

Octane Render?

If you are unfamiliar to what Octane offers over other renderers, Octane is a GPU based and a physically based renderer, and it is un-biased -the renderer is never really finished, it just keeps going tracking the light paths forever.

How Octane Works

Octane Render does its rendering calculations on your video card’s processor leaving your CPU open for other tasks, so there are some hardware requirements that need to be met. However, video cards are fairly inexpensive. The Octane render engine is a physical render engine, meaning all of its calculations are based in some real-world properties.

Physical versus Old-School

A great example of what a physical renderer has to offer versus non-physical, are both energy conserving materials and how lighting is dealt with – both using physical models and estimations that are based in real world situations. As an example of this, the old stand-by Phong Shader, can actually reflect more light than is coming into it… this is something that cannot happen in real life.

As an experiment, try holding two mirrors facing each other to create that “endless reflection” effect, and notice that each reflection is a bit darker. this means that the light that is bouncing from one mirror to the other, is gradually loosing energy, so if we relate that back to a Phong Shader, we can see that the shader does not behave physically correct at all.

Octane Render does have its key points, if you want to learn more about Octane Render and what it offers, check the site here: Otoy’s Octane Render